long hallway, came to its end, found another, climbed up a flight of stairs, emerged in yet another hallway. Ever keeping a mental map of the way he had come, he followed the same procedure in each hallway—turn off the flashlight and try to spot a line of light seeping out from underneath one of the doors. At last, in the fourth passageway, along the bottom crack of the sixth door, he found such a line. Softly he turned the large gilt doorknob and went in, to find himself in a library, surrounded by the oiled spines of leather-bound books which gleamed in the light of candles and fire.
In a cushioned, highbacked armchair near the stone fireplace sat a smallish, black-haired young man in knee-breeches and a cutaway, swallowtail coat.
Glancing up at Chuck Falcon, the youth gave an exclamation of pleasure, closed his book and put it down between a half-drunk goblet of milk and a fancy dagger on a small table. Then he rose to greet his unexpected visitor. “Your servant, sir! Delighted to make your acquaintance! Mother of pearl, man, you’re drenched! Beastly weather in these parts—come over to the fire and dry yourself.”
He poked it up with a fire-iron and threw another log on the blaze. Chuck needed no further urging. The worst of the excess rainwater had dripped off in the passageways, but the warmth of the fire was still gratifying. He slung off his backpack and turned first his face, then his back, to the flickering heat.
His host straightened, looked at him, and hesitated a moment, still holding the poker uncertainly in his hand. Then, thrusting it back into its stand beside the fireplace, he went on, “Sherry? No—no, I think brandy, to take off the chill.”
“Brandy will be fine, thanks.” Studying the young man’s face, pale and haggard-eyed as it was, Chuck wondered if he had found Bob Lozinski.
* * * *
While his host was pouring the brandy, Chuck Falcon picked up the book the young man had been reading. It was a collection of poems by Swinburne and Morris, with a calling card inserted as a bookmark. The card was printed with the name “Sir Despard Murgatroyd, Baronet,” but the “Despard” was lined through and the name “Ruthven” printed neatly above it. In small Gothic letters beneath the name was printed, “Villain-at-Large. Abductions, Burglaries, Assassinations, & Other Assorted Criminal Activities.” In the lower right-hand corner was the simple address, “Ruddigore Castle.” Yes, all this sounded like Gilbert and Sullivan’s way of looking at things. But which operetta?
Chuck’s host turned with a snifter of brandy in each hand, and saw him reading the card. Noticing a slight blush spread through the young man’s cheeks, Chuck replaced the card, having kept his finger between the pages where he’d found it, and laid the book back on the table. “Sir Ruthven?” he asked conversationally, accepting his snifter.
“Rivven,” replied the baronet, correcting his pronunciation. “We usually utter it with the elision. Not a pleasant name in any case, is it? But I regret our lack of a formal introduction…”
“Falcon. Dr. Charles Falcon—call me ‘Chuck.’ I’m a stranger to these parts.”
“Dr. Falcon.” Sir Ruthven bowed, then lifted his own snifter of brandy. “Your servant, sir. To a mutually profitable acquaintanceship.”
Apparently, going by the half-emptied goblet of milk, Sir Ruthven was a social rather than a serious drinker. Now, after one (admittedly generous) swallow of brandy, he seemed to relax a little. “May I inquire, Doctor Falcon, what induces you to seek our peculiarly grim corner of the country?”
Well, why not start with something obvious? “I’m hoping to look up a fellow named Bunthorne.”
“Bunthorne? Not Reginald Bunthorne, the fleshly poet?”
Remembering the skinny character in the costume design, Chuck smiled. “Well, I’d hardly have called him ‘fleshly,’ but I believe he is a poet.”
“It refers to his style. Wait, I have his book here somewhere.”
While Sir Ruthven was searching the crowded bookshelves, Chuck took the opportunity to re-examine the volume his host had been reading. Opening it to the place marked, he noticed in the margin of the right-hand page a small, elegant pointing hand drawn in ink. He followed the pointing finger and read the lines:
“From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives for ever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.”
“Ah, here it is!” came Sir Ruthven’s voice. Again Chuck replaced the volume of Swinburne and Morris on the table, as the baronet brought a slim leather-backed book to the fireplace. “Heart-Foam and Other Poems. Actually, he did not publish the title poem; but he inscribed it in holograph on the flyleaf of each and every copy:
“Oh, to be wafted away
From this black Aceldama of sorrow,
Where the dust of an earthy to-day
Is the earth of a dusty to-morrow!”
Sir Ruthven’s taste in poetry—assuming Sir Ruthven was Bob Lozinski—disturbed Dr. Falcon. But all he said for the time being was, “Very nice.”
“You really think so? Well, but you’re in the wrong part of the country entirely to find Mr. Bunthorne. He resides in Suffolk.”
“I see. Maybe you could show me a map?”
“A map? Nothing easier!” Crossing the library to an oakwood writing-desk, Sir Ruthven lowered its top and rummaged through the pigeonholes until he found a rolled piece of paper. Unrolling it on the desk, he weighted down one edge with a blown-glass paperweight, looked around for something to hold down the other edge, and chose the heavy-handled Florentine dagger that had been resting on the table with his book and milk.
Chuck squinted down at the map, memorizing it. As nearly as he could remember from Chandra’s schooling, both the early part of it back on Old Earth and the advanced degrees earned in Papa’s Pride, it showed a fairly accurate representation of southern England, with Penzance, Portsmouth, and London clearly marked about where he thought they should be. But the size of southern England seemed to be exaggerated, and the size of the surrounding bodies of water and land shrunk, so that in the heart of a scaled-down eastern Europe Chuck quickly saw a bright gold area labeled “Pfenning Halbpfennig” in large letters, and above it to the northwest a tiny drawing of a fortress labeled “Castle Adamant.” More operettas he wasn’t familiar with. At the top of a miniaturized Italy he found Venice; and just off the coast of a squashed Spain he noticed an island named Barataria—that was for The Gondoliers, which Chandra had seen. Beyond Barataria was another island, named Utopia—that rang no bell—and beyond that, with no regard for the American continents or the Pacific Ocean, was Japan, its principal metropolis captioned Titipu.
“Here is Ruddigore Castle, where I regret to say we are now.” Sir Ruthven pointed to an ill-starred location near the western tip of Cornwall. “And here,” he went on, moving his finger across the map past London to a site near the eastern coast, “is Castle Bunthorne.” Returning his finger to
